Impartido por:

Christopher Balme

Professor

Transcripción

But what did it mean to be on tour? Acting companies could be on the road, sea, and rail for up to 18 months on end. A tour might go from England to Egypt, to India, and from there, all through Southeast Asia and on to China or Japan, and then all the way back again. Actors might appear in a dozen countries, and work in temperatures of 40 degrees in the shade. They would have to deal with many currencies, and were only paid when they played. Traveling time, and there was a lot of it, was not recompensed. A text published in a theater magazine in 1917 warned English actors of the perils of such tours. Apart from the financial and health hazards, there were insects, and I quote: "Insects abound, there are huge cockroaches with wings, vast spiders, long-bodied winged ants, smaller-bodied wingless ants and myriads, white ants that eat your books and clothes, red ants that eat your food, black ants that eat you. There are scorpions, centipedes, lizards, hornets, mosquitoes, sand flies, flying beetles, dragonflies, snakes, huge rats. And every description of crawling and creeping thing that it is possible to conceive."